Extraterrestrial vehicles are increasingly being employed to position satellites in space after exit from the earth's atmosphere. Once positioned, the satellites will frequently deploy instrumentation. Such instrumentation may include a wide variety of componentry, including for example, communications equipment, solar array panels and imaging modules. In many applications, the deployed instrumentation is stored within a selectively openable bay of the satellite during travel from the earth, and deployed into a predetermined position relative to the satellite after positioning in space. For instrumentation deployment and support purposes, truss and hinge assemblies are frequently employed.
In this regard, while truss structures may be at least partially constructed manually in space, the benefits of having a truss structure preassembled for selective, automatic deployment utilizing hinge assemblies are readily recognizable. In such arrangements, it is important for the hinge assemblies and deployable trusses to not only provide the necessary support and stiffness for accurate, reliable and repeatable positioning of the instrumentation mounted thereupon, but additionally for such devices to be stowable in a compact manner. In this regard, it should be appreciated that not only the width and length of a collapsed truss is important, but additionally the depth of such collapsed truss and interfacing hinge assembly.